April 2016

April 27, 2016

It was great to see the smiling face of Lorraine Gibbons (2nd from the left), founder of Garden State Urban Farms (GSUF). I have been a big fan of hers ever since the founding of Brick City Urban Farms (the original name) in Newark. Good memories of visiting BCUF and then GSUF at the new hydroponic greenhouse in Orange, NJ came back when reading this article.

We need many more socially conscious entrepreneurs like Lorraine doing what she does in all inner cities across the country. She walks the walk.

Read a series of prior posts about BCUF now GSUF dating back to when Newark Mayor Cory Booker (now Senator) visited the farm back in 2008.

Jersey City has also launched its first Earth Box Farms, an initiative in which 125 Earth Boxes were donated by Garden State Urban Farms (GSUF). The Earth Boxes, or self-contained gardening systems, were distributed to the Maureen Collier Senior Center, the Jersey City Health and Human Services building and the Berry Gardens Public Housing complex. Earth Boxes make it possible to garden anywhere, including paved parking lots and patios.

GSUF collaborates with schools, nonprofit organizations and government groups to provide employment opportunities and educational programming, as well as low-cost, healthy food in urban areas throughout New Jersey. GSUF also provided training for the gardeners, along with the guidance of master gardeners from the Jersey City Parks Coalition.

More gardens will be sprouting up around Jersey City this spring thanks to a new initiative that will expand urban agriculture and also make healthier foods from farmers' markets more accessible.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and the Department of Health and Human Services are joining up with the Partnership for a Healthier JC to increase resources for "Earth Box" gardens at several sites around the city and Adopt-A-Lot programs, which allows residents to transform unused city-owned lots into gardens by leasing out the site for a dollar. Read more...

April 11, 2016

Many of you have seen this photo before. As of today there have been more than 76,000 views of it in this Flickr album.

I installed this sub-irrigation planter (SIP) garden (mostly succulents) on the property of a b&b hotel as compensation for temporary storage space for my plant lab back in 2014. Unfortunately the inn closed due to declining business that was evidently triggered by the great recession. It is now apartments.

The plants are still alive but now intermingled with traditional drain hole pots. The garden as it was is no longer intact. All of their planters should have been converted into SIPs. Sad story but life moves on.

The replacement garden is below. As you can see this version is an indoor light garden. It is housed on an Inter-Metro style rolling rack (aka wire rack) from Costco ($90 - 4'x6'x1.5', 6 shelves with casters for easy mobility, chrome). These racks are also available from other stores such as Lowe's Home Depot and The Container Store (usually without casters). The light is supplied by LED shop lights, also from Costco ( 2 per shelf). These lights appear to be an exclusive Costco item ($30-35).

This as a beta-test garden in my plant lab. We will see how the plants grow in this set-up. I am creating a Flickr album with many more close-up photos of individual planters. I will post the status monthly. Stay tuned.

Note the shelf below the "desert garden." It is a "coffee plantation" shown previously in this post. Click the photo for a much larger view.

The little coffee trees below the desert garden are growing like Topsy. I keep pruning the tops to create strong trunks. I will soon have more room to let them grow taller. The next light garden theme will be tropical rainforest plants including Tillandsias (air plants).

Another shelf in the desert garden. Click on the photo for a much larger view.

There will also be another version of the "desert garden" in the future. The plants will be growing in sub-irrigated tray planters instead of individual pots. The SIP trays will simulate a desert landscape with decorative sand over the top of the artificial planter mix substrate. It will allow much more room for creativity for those whose vision includes an Arabian fantasy. Shhh...don't tell anyone there is water just below the sand. It will be your little secret.

These theme gardens will offer a new way to supplement book learning of other subjects besides STEM based plant science in public schools (geography and environmental studies for example). My vision is that there be one or more of these light gardens in every school in the U.S. and abroad.

I will seek corporate sponsorship for this worthy project. Our horticultural education system is currently dominated by ideology and outdated gardening practices (drain holes for example). We need disruptive change if we expect to feed ourselves in the future.

Indoor light gardens should be available to all teachers and students every day the year round regardless of weather or climate. Since they are highly mobile with casters they can be rolled easily from classroom to classroom. Simply plug them in and the show is on.

These are examples of the planters used in this desert garden. The rectangular planter at the top was a clearance item from Rite-Aid. They are high fired ceramic. I have found a number of bargains in Rite-Aid at the end of the season. I bought several of these for just a few dollars.

The two water and oxygen reservoirs are made from recycled 5.3 oz Dannon Greek yogurt containers. Note the clear vinyl fill tube (3/4" o.d. - 5/8" i.d. allows for insertion of a plastic funnel with a 1/2" neck). You need just one. Water will flow across the bottom of the planter into the reservoir on the right.

The reservoir for the clay pot (.78 at Home Depot) is the little plastic grow container the cactus came in. All holes in these reservoirs were made with a wood burning pen. The drain hole in the little clay pot was plugged with Goop adhesive (my favorite). It is widely available in big box and hardware stores and on-line.

The high-fired, high-quality, ceramic planter on the right is from Ikea. They were just .49 each (note that they were less than the common clay pot). I bought a bunch of these planters. What a deal! And...there was no need to plug a drain hole in these cache pots.

This photo shows how the soil wicks work. They are partially filled for illustration purposes. The potting mix surrounding the water/oxygen reservoir acts as the wick (no cloth wick required). The plants roots grow down to (and into) the reservoir while the water moves up by capillary action. This "SIP action" is actually a very simple form of hydroponics with no need for power or oxygen pumps.

Part 2 of this series of posts about SIP light gardens everywhere, any time, will explain how I use an inexpensive digital scale to measure, monitor and manage the reservoir contents and the soil moisture. The method is very accurate once you get the hang of it. There is no need for praying and you do not need a mythical green thumb.

At some time in the near future (this year hopefully) there will be an app for it.